When We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel
An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller.
From the author of The Art of Inheriting Secrets comes an emotional new tale of two sisters, an ocean of lies, and a search for the truth.
Her sister has been dead for fifteen years when she sees her on the TV news...
Josie Bianci was killed years ago on a train during a terrorist attack. Gone forever. It's what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit's world. Live coverage of a club fire in Auckland has captured the image of a woman stumbling through the smoke and debris. Her resemblance to Josie is unbelievable. And unmistakable. With it comes a flood of emotions--grief, loss, and anger--that Kit finally has a chance to put to rest: by finding the sister who's been living a lie.
After arriving in New Zealand, Kit begins her journey with the memories of the past: of days spent on the beach with Josie. Of a lost teenage boy who'd become part of their family. And of a trauma that has haunted Kit and Josie their entire lives.
Now, if two sisters are to reunite, it can only be by unearthing long-buried secrets and facing a devastating truth that has kept them apart far too long. To regain their relationship, they may have to lose everything.
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Readers say *When We Believed in Mermaids* is an emotionally rich novel with compelling characters and lyrical settings, praised for its vivid backsto...
Or stay up all night to finish reading it! The characters in this book are so perfectly drawn that you feel what they're feeling, and see how they're seeing their life and the lives of those they love and have loved in the past.
This book makesi it onto my "highly recommended" list, the first for 2021!
Told in alternating voices of Kit and Josie (Mari), the chapters tell the story of the 2 girls and their past growing up in CA. I really liked the writing style and how the past was sprinkled into the story and eventually the storylines merge. I enjoyed the back story so much more; their crazy childhood growing up surfing in CA, sleeping on the beach, and the lost boy who became a part of their family. I liked the love interest story of Javier for Kit. I didn't like that the sisters reunion happened so late in the story. There were too many buried secrets (which are revealed) but are they able to move forward and forgive the betrayal of the past? I also didn't like the subplot of the murder in the house that Mari and her husband bought. Who cares? It didn't add anything to the story. It just fizzled out. The ending seemed very rushed to me.
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